A summary of a classic short George Herbert poem, by Dr Oliver Tearle
George Herbert (1593-1633) was one of the greatest devotional poets of his age – indeed, of any age. As well as famous poems such as the justly celebrated poem of religious doubt and personal freedom, ‘The Collar’, Herbert wrote many other great poems about God. ‘A Wreath’ is not perhaps among his most famous poems, so some remarks about its meaning might help here.
Facts about the life and work of Leviathan author Thomas Hobbes
1. Thomas Hobbes was born premature, because his mother was worried about the imminent invasion of the Spanish Armada. Hobbes was born in April 1588, several months before the Spanish Armada of Philip II of Spain set sail for the English Channel. In the months leading up to the invasion, England was full of fear about the coming attack. As Hobbes later put it, ‘my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear.’ Hobbes would live a long and productive life. Although he famously described human existence as ‘nasty, brutish, and short’, Hobbes himself lived to be 91, dying in 1679.
An analysis of ‘Sudden Light’, a poem by Pre-Raphaelite poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti
‘Sudden Light’ was written by Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) in the early 1850s, and published in the 1863 volume Poems: An Offering to Lancashire. (It’s the only time poems have been offered to Lancashire in this way, at least that we can recall.) However, the poem as it is usually reprinted is a slightly later version, with a different final stanza. The poem cited below is the later version of ‘Sudden Light’, which appeared in the 1881 volume Poems: A New Edition. What follows, then, is the poem, followed by our analysis of its meaning and language.
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
Great facts about famous libraries and librarians around the world
We thought it was about time we saluted that noble institution, the library, with some of our favourite interesting bits of trivia about libraries and librarians.
Jacob Grimm, Philip Larkin, Casanova, David Hume, Jorge Luis Borges, and Lewis Carroll all worked as librarians.
Another word for a librarian is ‘bibliothecar’.
An introduction to a short gem of a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
‘The Eagle’ is one of Tennyson’s shortest poems – probably the shortest of his famous poems. (We include it in our pick of the best short Victorian poems.) Running to just six lines, the poem seems to require no additional analysis; but for those who are interested, we append to the poem (below) a few thoughts on its meaning and language.
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.